Kung Fury: Street Rage Review

Two months ago YouTube Channel LaserUnicorns released their epic tribute to action films of the 80’s, Kung Fury. If you haven’t seen the thirty minutes of madness and mayhem then I highly recommend you check it out. So, of course in true 80’s fashion there’s an obligatory movie spin-off game that I was itching to get my hands on.

Kung Fury: Street Rage is the latest game from Swedish app developer Hello There. You play as the bad ass cop known only as Kung Fury. Your mission is to kill as many Nazis as possible, because, reasons.

Upon starting the game you are immediately thrown back in time with the retro arcade cabinet screen being a persistent feature. The sprites are the expected pixilated graphics. To add to this nostalgia is the David Hasselhoff inspired bit tunes full of blood pumping classic awesome. Every piece of sound is designed with this in mind. From the audio distortion when the games title is announced, down to the sound of a coin being slotted into the machine when you start, it recreates that arcade feel of yesteryear.

The controls are simple, press left and right to attack in different directions and that’s it. Clearly designed as a mobile app game there are no movement controls as such. What seems like a simple game on the surface is actually far deeper than you will first realise. Your instinct will be to button mash and that will be a mistake. It takes precise timing based upon vicinity to enemies to land a hit. Each consecutive hit will stack to grant score multipliers. There are hit confirm animations to help with your timing. If you time an attack incorrectly you miss which will lose you a few hits off your combo. Misses also stun you momentarily leaving you open to attack. Which isn’t the best idea as you can only take three hits before it’s game over. So take your time, especially as your combo meter doesn’t expire with time only with misses. It’s clear from the offset that it’s the kind of game that’s easy to learn but will take time to master.

The enemies seem to scale not only with points but also with high combo strings. So the better you play the sooner you will get high value enemies. Nazi grunts, these are basic enemies that take a single hit to kill. Nazi officers, these take two hits to take down. Female Nazis in white that teleport to the other side of you every time you hit them. Nazi Robots that require several strikes but damn, they’re fun to kill. Finally, if you survive long enough you get red ninjas. I never saw the ninjas even though I ranked on the high score table.

There’s only one level and as far as I’m aware there are no boss battles. Yeah, not even Kung Fuhrer himself, which is a bit disappointing. Outside of that though the game is incredibly addictive. I found the controls to be responsive, there’s a satisfying connect with each attack. If I missed it was because of my poor timing and that’s a thing not many games like this can boast. Seeing how far you can get on just three lives is a real challenge. The turn over is fast so as soon as you fail you can start again in moments. From my time with the game I didn’t notice any way to gain lives back through score and even 80’s games had that.

I went into this game hoping for a Streets of Rage or Final Fight clone. What I got was more like the shield challenge level from IK+, only far more fun. A lack of extra stages, ability to get lives back and boss battles let this game down. If any game was crying out for a boss battle, it’s this one. There is simply no reason to spend more than a few hours on this title at most. Yet, what’s there is really challenging and addictive. It’s well worth a moment of your time, especially if you liked the short film or you’re simply an 80’s kid like me.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Sony Playstation 4 code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.

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